April Lindner

A Tribute to The Formalist

(First presented at the Form and Narrative Poetry
Conference, West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania,
June 8, 2000.)

William Baer's editorial notes
in Issue #1 of The Formalist do not
constitute the firebreathing manifesto a reader might expect, given the
publication's strong and coherent sense of mission, and given the literary
climate into which The Formalist was launched. Mr. Baer simply welcomed
his readers, and offered the following statement of purpose: "The Formalist
is dedicated to metrical poetry, which the editors feel is the mainstream
of English-language verse. We hope to create a forum for formal poetry and
to encourage a renewal of interest in traditional poetic craftsmanship."

That's it for editorial rhetoric.
Instead, Mr. Baer let Issue #1 make its own case for the power of traditional
forms, which it did, through the strength of its criticism and poetry.

As The Formalist has
remained a remarkably consistent product over its decade-long lifespan,
a quick survey of Issue #1 gives us a sense of the publication's distinctive
formula. First of all, there's always a mix of poetry by the academic
and the new formalists, featuring some of the most stellar figures in
both camps. In volume one, we get poems by Howard Nemerov, Donald Justice,
and Richard Wilbur, side by side with R. S. Gwynn, Dana Gioia, and Andrew
Hudgins, for example. The Formalist also welcomes relative newcomers.
In fact, Issue #1 even features a meditation on Socrates in ballad metre
by Mary B. Susanka, a seventh-grader from Oak View, California. Lyric,
narrative and satire are carefully balanced, and for good measure Mr.
Baer also tosses in some translations (in Issue #1 we get Cattullus and
Horace translated by Joseph Salemi and Goethe translated by Henry W. Russell.)

Of course The Formalist's
real business is keeping tradition alive. To underscore this point, each
issue includes a selection entitled "From the Tradition" which draws liberally
from the history of English verse. (Issue #1 gives us Oliver Goldsmith,
M.G. (Monk) Lewis, Yeats, and the ballad Sir Patrick Spens.) In this way,
The Formalist stresses the continuity that ties the newest generation
of formalist poets to their spiritual forbears through the ages.

Each issue of The Formalist
offers intelligent criticism by both the living and the dead, some
of it new, much of it reprinted, most of it dealing with matters of meter
and form. In Issue #1 we find Philip Larkin's "The Pleasure Principle,"
the Australian poet A.D. Hope's "Free-Verse: A Post-Mortem," and Samuel
Maio's "The Enduring Robert Frost." While Issue #1 contains no interviews,
they have become one of the publication's most important offerings, with
subjects including John Frederick Nims, John Hollander, Anthony Hecht,
Donald Justice -- a dream team of formalist poets. Though much of the
criticism featured over the years in The Formalist unequivocally
asserts the timelessness of regular traditional forms, the publication
has nonetheless managed to consistently rise above the poetry wars. A
reader finds no polemics in The Formalist, and, for that matter,
no reviews. Moreover, in every editorial since his first, Mr. Baer has
remained softspoken and circumspect, choosing to let others do the talking.
And they do.

For instance, Richard Wilbur
has written of The Formalist: "My dictionary is very negative about
the word formalist, calling it rigourous or excessive adherence to recognized
forms, but you have proven for a decade that it can be the dance of substance."

And, in the words of Donald
Justice:

I count on The Formalist
to keep, unabashedly, the sometimes flickering flame of the great tradition
alive and glowing. Its mingling of the old and the new is salutary and
illuminating.

And X. J. Kennedy has written:

The Formalist has become
one of the essential little magazines, a shining refuge for poets who
play the Grand Old Game of rhyme and meter.

To those tributes, I would
like to add that everything about The Formalist---its consistency,
its understated tone, even it's simple, elegant, unchanging design---
everything bespeaks serene confidence in its own rightness of both mission
and of execution.